The present invention relates to a new and distinct cultivar of Helleborus plant, botanically known as Helleborus niger×Helleborus sternii, and hereinafter referred to by the name ‘BLT03’.
The new Helleborus is a product of a planned breeding program in Hampshire, United Kingdom. The objective of the breeding program was to create new frost-tolerant Helleborus cultivars with unique and attractive flower coloration.
The new Helleborus plant originated from a cross-pollination in Hampshire, United Kingdom in 2001, of proprietary selection of Helleborus niger, not patented, as the female, or seed, parent with a proprietary selection of Helleborus sternii, not patented, as the male, or pollen, parent. The new Helleborus plant was discovered and selected by the Inventor as a single flowering plant from within the progeny of the stated cross-pollination grown in a controlled environment in Hampshire, United Kingdom in 2003.
Asexual reproduction of the new Helleborus plant by tissue culture in a controlled environment in The Netherlands since 2003, has shown that the unique features of this new Helleborus plant are stable and reproduced true to type in successive generations.